Monday, December 17, 2012

You Can't Catch Me, I'm the Gingerbread Man!

Our Gingerbread Man unit is probably my favorite one we do all year! We spend a week reading different versions of the classic tale. We read "The Gingerbread Cowboy", "The Gingerbread Pirates", and even a book called "Stop That Pickle!" Ask your child to explain why we read this one. ;)

After reading each story, we filled in a comparison story map showing the title, characters, refrain, and ending. We learned that a refrain is something that is repeated throughout the entire story. For example, in "The Gingerbread Man", the refrain is "Run, run, as fast as you can. You can't catch me. I'm the gingerbread man!" We were also reminded by Xander about a big word we learned a while back: Personification. I was so proud that they remembered this!!! :)

We also kept a gingerbread journal where we wrote how each of our stories ended.

On Thursday, we did a really fun science experiment. Our essential question was "What would have happened if the gingerbread man had swam across the river by himself?" We stated our hypothesis and then tested it out. We put a gingerbread man in a cup of water and recorded our observations. We observed him after 20 minutes, and then again after an hour. We concluded that the gingerbread man couldn't swim across the river by himself because he would have absorbed the water and crumbled.